Using the SCC download cacher for air-gapped environments

You can use the SCC download cacher for air-gapped environments by using the buildRepo subcommand to download all patches for a repository to a specified directory.

Before you begin

  • Ensure you have access to the BigFix supported SUSE base repositories and sub-repositories. To check, run the subcommand check-allrepos.
  • Ensure you have enough space to download the repository metadata and packages. To check for the required storage space, run the subcommand check-storagereq.
  • Increase the BigFix server’s sha1 folder size limit by doing the following steps:
    1. From the BigFix console, right-click the computer and select Edit Computer Setting.
    2. Increase the _BESGather_Download_CacheLimitMB size.

      The suggested size is the current BigFix server’s sha1 folder size plus the size of sha1_download_dir.

      If the size of the sha1_download_dir cannot be determined beforehand the suggested size of the sha1_download_dir is a minimum of 50GB per repository. Note that the minimum size of 50GB might increase over time.

Procedure

  1. Use the buildRepo subcommand with the SCCDownloadCacher.exe file to download all patches for a repository to a specified directory. For example:
    SCCDownloadCacher.exe --mirrorUser username  --mirrorPass base64_encoded_password 
    --download_dir C:\downloads --sha1_download_dir C:\sha1_downloads
    buildRepo --key sles-12-x86_64-sp0,sles-11-x86-sp4
    

    In this example, the download cacher tool downloads the packages to sha1_download_dir and the repository metadata to download_dir for both the "sles-12-x86_64-sp0" and "sles-11-x86-sp4" repositories.

  2. Transfer the download_dir to the air-gapped BigFix server and the sha1 files in sha1_download_dir to the BigFix Server’s sha1 fold.
  3. Open the configuration file of the SCC download plug-in called plugin.ini. Configure the plugin.ini file with the following settings so that the SCC download plug-in retrieves the required packages from the directory instead of trying to retrieve the packages online.
    localCache = <download_directory_specified_for_the_--download_dir_parameter>
    localCacheOnly = yes
    Tip: Use the showKeys command to show the list of OS keys for the currently supported repositories in the <cacher directory>\logs\SCCDownloadCacher.log file :
    SCCDownloadCacher.exe --mirrorUser <username> --mirrorPass <base64_encoded_password> 
    [parameters] showsKeys